A Muggleborn's Story
by PorcupineGirl
Summary: What would a modern day muggleborn think, having to give up their cell phone, IM, iPod, blogs, websites and video games to go to Hogwarts? A magazine article about the life and times of Dennis Creevey, new Muggle Studies professor at Hogwarts.
1. Page 1

Harry sat down in his easy chair with the latest copy of _Accio Squid_, the alumni magazine started three years earlier by Susan Bones. It published twice a year, and reading it always took him back. He opened straight to the cover story, a feature profiling the new Muggle Studies professor...

_Can Muggles Improve Wizarding Life? Professor Dennis Creevey Thinks So!_

As disappointed as the entire Hogwarts community was to hear that Arthur Weasley was retiring from his post as Professor of Muggle Studies after over a decade of service, Arthur himself gives his successor the heartiest of recommendations.

"I've known Dennis since he was a NEWT-level student," Arthur tells us, "Of course, I'd heard the name before - he and his brother were in school with some of my own children, all in Gryffindor together. I gave up my post at the Ministry to come teach just after my youngest graduated and left home, and she was two years above Dennis. So he was a sixth year when I got there, and intensely interested in Muggle Studies. Easily the best student in his year, one of the top few I've taught in the twelve years I've been here. Delivered solid Os on both the OWLs and the NEWTs. The muggleborns always have a bit of an advantage early on, but to keep getting top marks beyond your OWL year really takes a deep understanding not just of how Muggle society functions, but its relationship to wizarding society both historically and today. And I'm not sure I've had a single student more fascinated by those relationships than Dennis Creevey - his enthusiasm will infect his own students, I'm sure."

Professor Creevey was born to muggle parents, but his Hogwarts letter did not come entirely as a surprise. His older brother, Colin, had received one two years before. All reports indicate that Colin showed quite as much promise in the subject as his younger brother, though his family indicates that his dearest ambition was to become a photojournalist for the _Daily Prophet_. Sadly, none of this potential was to be fulfilled - at the tender age of sixteen, Colin gave his life fighting in the Battle of Hogwarts. Dennis had idolized his brother; as deeply as the loss affected him, though, he understood why Colin had been willing to give his life to the anti-Voldemort cause. They and many of their muggleborn friends had suffered persecution that year, and a muggle family close to the Creeveys had been killed in one of the many Voldemort-orchestrated building collapses.

In fact, Professor Creevey describes Colin's death as a galvanizing moment in his life: "I'd grown up with muggles, they were my family, my friends. I'd known nothing but muggles for longer than I'd been at Hogwarts. I realized that as long as wizard society was content to merely exist beside them, not to truly value them or try to learn from them, there would always be undercurrents of wizarding superiority of the type that led to the Battle and so many other dark moments in our history." As soon as he graduated, Dennis made it his goal to address this issue.

"Even those wizards who had no hatred of muggles whatsoever rarely regarded them as our true equals," he clams, "Many wizards to this day pity them, or see them as quaint throwbacks or oddities. Professor Weasley was the first wizard I'd met who truly took to heart the fact that while our magic may be beyond the comprehension of any muggle, they have accomplished just as many things that would befuddle the average wizard."

In what many would see as a risky, even ludicrous move, upon graduation from Hogwarts Dennis enrolled in classes at a muggle technical college. He moved back in with his parents, and lived as a muggle for nearly two years. He kept a subscription to the _Prophet_ and exchanged owls with a few school friends, but kept his wand locked away and had no other contact with the wizarding world. He spent his time reconnecting with his muggle family and friends, and studying a form of muggle technology known as "computers." Computers were to become a central focus of his career, inspiring many of his innovations and inventions over the next few years.


	2. Page 2

What is a computer? Professor Creevey can explain it himself better than this muggle-ignorant reporter could ever hope to: "In the past few decades, muggle technology has taken an unprecedented turn, exceeding wizarding capabilities in some interesting ways for the first time in history. A computer, in the most basic terms, is a box that can do millions of mathematical computations every second. That may not sound impressive, but muggles have found ways to harness those computations as though they were a new form of magic. They can write at ten times the speed of quill and ink; store thousands of photographs as though they'd put an engorgement charm on a shoebox; make moving artwork that rivals that of the most talented wizard painter; even connect to other people's computers to communicate instantly. Faster than a patronus, and more reliably than the floo network. No longer are the muggles playing catch-up, as when they found a way to fly millennia after wizards had mastered the broomstick. If wizards ignore computers for too long, we will be the ones catching up."

An ominous prediction for most wizards, but Creevey sees it only as a challenge. After learning how to repair and maintain these computers at the muggle college, he got a part-time job at Flourish and Blott's and saved every penny for his "special projects." He continued to live at home with his muggle parents, both to conserve his resources and to stay connected to the muggle world. Soon enough, his first invention was ready to share with the world - the Parchboard. He shared the first prototypes only with muggleborn friends who had previously used the muggle equivalent, a "keyboard," which he explains as the way that muggles communicate with their computers and do most of their writing.

The idea is simple enough, but using a Parchboard seems overly complicated to most adult witches and wizards. The Parchboard itself is a clear sheet that can be laid over the bottom few inches of any piece of parchment. A series of squares are drawn on the sheet, with letters, numbers, and punctuation in seemingly random order. When a square is touched, the character on it appears written, in your own handwriting, at the top of the parchment. To the uninitiated, memorizing the locations of dozens of tiny squares and trying to hit them with any accuracy seems far more trouble than simply writing your message out; however, the Parchboard was an instant hit with those to whom he had given a prototype. After making adjustments based on their comments (the squares are now slightly raised, for instance, to make it easier to feel your way around without watching your hands), Dennis faced the onerous task of marketing and selling his new invention.

His part time job provided the breakthrough he needed. As the new school year approached, Dennis noticed increasing numbers of muggleborns who were disappointed to learn that they would be writing with quill and ink. He managed to make sure that his bosses were within earshot whenever he heard someone complaining particularly loudly. He convinced Mr. Flourish himself to carry a limited stock of the Parchboards the following August. The small stock sold out quickly, and sales have been steadily increasing ever since. It may have helped that Dennis sent a free Parchboard to Professor Weasley, who not only began using one exclusively for his writing, but also made it a mandatory supply for all Muggle Studies students at OWL level or above.

Mr. Flourish's son spoke to us about the popularity of this new and strange item. "I thought my dad was crazy at first, buying up even a few of this thing Dennis was going on about. What's wrong with a good quill, after all? I didn't think anyone would want to learn to use such a convoluted device. But the muggleborns coming into Hogwarts, they've changed. These computers, they must be awfully important, because they all want to take one with them. Throw a right fit when they find out it wouldn't work inside of Hogwarts to start with. They snap up the Parchboards left and right, and they all use 'em as though they'd had one attached to their hands since birth. And when the other students see these muggleborns typing away, finishing their essays in record time, well they all want to learn to use one, too. Some of their parents forbid 'em, say that writing by hand is what any truly industrious wizard does. To be honest, it's becoming a bit of a generation gap issue. But I say, if you can be twice as productive in half the time, it's not hurting anyone!"

Dennis moved out of his parents' home at the age of 22 and into a Diagon Alley flat. By this time, he was making a steady income from the Parchboards, but kept his Flourish and Blott's job just in case sales cooled. Dennis was not content merely to be known as an inventor, however. From the beginning, every Parchboard came with an instruction booklet that also detailed the history of typing as a muggle invention. As sales of Parchboards grew, he hoped that an appreciation for muggle technology would as well. He began writing a guest column for the Daily Prophet; at first he detailed his experiences in the muggle college, but once his writing had earned a steady following he branched out. Sometimes he profiled prominent muggles who had achieved things that wizards had not, sometimes he suggested new muggle technologies that might be useful to wizards. By the age of 24, his essays were being featured in numerous prominent journals and magazines.

Many wizards were still wary of adapting too much muggle technology, but no one could argue with the success of the Parchboards. They could soon be found even in the Ministry of Magic, although adoption rates have been much higher among the younger generation. Typing classes have sprung up in most wizarding towns; Professor Weasley held a very popular Typists Club after school. Years after their introduction, Dennis had put out several revisions but had not yet started work on a new muggle-inspired invention.


	3. Page 3

**A/N: Hey, I bet you weren't expecting this to update! Ever, ever again. Surprise! I thought I'd forgotten what I was going to write next, but happened to find the third chapter sitting on my backup drive. So I'll be posting the fourth and final chapter in the next day or two.**

That appears to be changing now, though.

"The power of the muggle internet," Professor Creevey explains, "Is in the ability to get to vast amounts of information in just a few minutes, no matter where you are. Let's say that I am an expert in unicorns, and you are an expert in puffskeins. Right now, we would each write a book on our field of expertise. And if I wanted to read about puffskeins, I would have to go to a bookstore or a library and get your book. And the same for you to learn about unicorns. The way the muggles do it, I would put all of my information about unicorns into my computer, which functions sort of like a book in this case. And you'd put your information on puffskeins into your computer. But then our computers would be connected together through the internet, similar to how the floo network connects fireplaces. So if I want to know about puffskeins, I can just sit with my computer, and it will pull the information out of your computer without me ever leaving my house! It's like what would happen if the library had a floo-enabled fireplace behind its checkout counter, and you could just stick your head in, ask for a book, and have it handed to you."

Is this the huge leap forward envisioned for wizards? Floo fireplaces behind every library desk? Will librarians find themselves in high demand, as people forego searching the stacks themselves and expect the staff to do the work for them?

Luckily, the solution that is being developed as we speak is less labor-intensive and confusing. In fact, the future of wizarding information exchange seems to forego libraries altogether. When Professor Creevey showed me his latest prototype, I will admit that at first I was baffled. The object he placed before me looked like little more than a completely blank leather-bound book. It wasn't until he laid a parchboard over the first page and began to type that I saw its true power. He typed the phrase "cleaning spells" onto the page. After a few seconds, the page was filled with a list of books!

"You see, we are working on linking books together directly. We've got the basic charm worked out that hooks a book up to this new network. Then we've taken these blank books and enchanted them to take information from the other books and display it on their own pages. You type in what you're looking for, and it gives you a list of books that mention that phrase. You select one of the books like this," he takes a quill and circles one of the titles, "and within seconds the pages of your blank book will show the text from the selected book."

Before my eyes, the pages fill up with the text of _Tips for the Happy Homewitch. _There are, of course, many kinks to be worked out and many improvements yet to be made. In this particular case, the book I'm trying to access is twenty pages longer than the book that I'm holding; this might be fixed by adjusting the size of the text automatically or by enchanting the last blank page to change at a tap to show any of the extra pages. Professor Creevey also thinks that soon they'll have perfected a charm to change the color of the pages on which your search phrase can be found.

Of course, right now only a handful of books are hooked into the network. Most of them are older titles; books whose authors have died, or whose sales have dropped off enough that the authors aren't worried about losing sales. While having the entire text of _Hogwarts, A History_ at your fingertips anywhere, anytime may be worth the price of admission alone, Dennis admits that it will be much harder to convince recent authors to make their books as available. Always the enterprising inventor, he is already hatching ideas to get around this glitch, even though hooking up all available books will take at least another few years.

"One option would be to let authors choose particular pages to put into the network. It would almost be a form of advertising. Another thing we're looking into is letting people hook up their own diaries or notebooks into the network. They're not making money off of it anyhow, why not show it to the world? Er, of course, in the case of diaries, we're looking into putting some sort of password system into place. So that I can give my friends the password to view my diary, but random strangers can't see it. The point is that there are many sources of information that we could make instantly available through this network of books. This Pagenet, as I've taken to calling it."

One group that is up in arms over the Pagenet is librarians. Irma Pince, Hogwarts librarian for over fifty years, is highly suspicious of this new technology. "Trying to put librarians out of business, is he? I remember Dennis Creevey. Never gave books the respect they deserve. Why, I remember he once tried to eat a cookie while searching the stacks of my library. He dared smear chocolate crumbs on the spines of MY books! Can you imagine? It's no surprise to me that he wants to do away with them altogether."

Creevey insists that his aim is not to put librarians out of a job, or to replace traditional books entirely. "This is one misunderstanding that we'll only sort out with time," he says, "There will always be a place for libraries and a place for books. If I know the information I want is in a particular book, would I rather search for that book in my Pagenet book, or just walk up my shelf and grab it? People will always want their own copies of the books they value most. And if I'm not entirely sure what keywords I'm interested in, but want to look through a variety of books on a general topic, I'd much rather stand in the relevant library section and see them all spread out before me so that I can pick and choose, pick one up, put it down, peruse a couple at a time. There are times when I want one particular piece of information quickly, and times when I just want to see what's out there. There are times when I need a human - a _librarian_ to help me find what I need. Just because there are times when I'll use Pagenet does not mean that there won't also be times when I use the library. Yes, I may use the library a bit less, but remember that broom sales did not bottom out when wizards learned to apparate."

"Obviously, I will be working closely with Madame Pince once I've started my position at Hogwarts to ensure that the concerns of librarians are taken into account, and her input will be invaluable in deciding which books in the Hogwarts library should be hooked up to the 'net," he adds.

When asked for comment on that point, Madame Pince merely grunted and said "I suppose we shall see about that, shan't we?"


End file.
